Boundaries With An Addict (A must watch for PARENTS OF ADDICTS)

If you've got a son or a daughter coming out of a treatment center, as in you're going to pick them up from rehab and you're planning to bring them home, or you're planning to pick them up and take them to a recovery residence. This is a must watch video. In this video, I'm going to interview Campbell Manning, our family specialist, and she's going to tell you all about how to set the right boundaries so that you're setting yourself up for success. Unfortunately, most. Most people that come to us as an aftercare program have already set the stage all wrong. They've messed it up. The parents have done all this home contract stuff and these signed recovery, relapse, warning, sign plans, and then they get here, and the first thing we have to do is undo all that. So before you go and mess it up, I know you spent a lot of time and money and energy getting them there. Let's set the stage for the right transition home. Okay, so, Campbell, last week we had so many people come and you have a slight breakdown as you fit in the office. What was that about?

It was about they had come from treatment and they already had this contract and all these rules and regulations that they were wanting to hold in place for their kid, and they just weren't gonna work. And I was like, oh, now I have to spend weeks undoing what just got done in treatment, and that's just a waste of time.

But, Campbell, in treatment, you know, they make them do those contracts before they left home.

I know, and that's why we're doing this. So they'll come here first or call us so we can tell them how not to do that so we don't have to spend weeks undoing it.

What do you mean you don't have a home contract? How are you gonna make them behave when they get home?

You're just gonna set down boundaries of behaviors you'll tolerate, and if they break them, then we'll redirect you on what to do.

Tell them why we're not a fan of having home contracts.

Not a fan of having home contracts. Because they're just box checkers. It's just a thing to say, I did it, and what happens is the kid's not gonna do their side of it, and then you're going to have to get stuck, obligated to do what you agreed to do. And all of a sudden, the kids running the show again, and the parents.

Are pissed because they'll put on there, I'm going to go to 90 meetings. In 90 days I'm only going to.

Talk to good friends. And then the police are the parents become the police that. But then they're backed into a corner of what they have to uphold. It's just, it doesn't work, right? I've never seen one work.

The kid holds the parent to their word, holds them hostage.

Right? And then you're backed into a corner because you said if you break the contract, here's the consequence.

It's usually big.

And it's big. And so like if you use, you have to go back to treatment and then they use and you're not sending it back to treatment so you look like a. And then the kid goes, oh, this contract's worthless.

Right. So generally what do we want them to do? Call us, Call us first.

Call us before they do anything.

No promises. Don't make any promises.

Don't make or threats because you know, everyone's different. So if money was a problem before, then we're probably going to have a little bit more boundary around money. Parents don't know what they don't know. And so they're like, well if you go to this many meetings and you only talk to these seven approved people and you use your phone for eight minutes. I mean I actually had a guy, do you remember this was like four years ago. And he said the shoes in the kids closet had to be facing 45 degrees to the west.

I thought you just made that up.

I did not make that up. I can't make that up.

I thought you just said that to me, silly.

No, Now I say 14 degrees northwest, like to exaggerate it. But no, it was on the contract. And of course the kid like threw his first pair of shoes in the closet and the dad was like, he's broken the contract. And I'm like, oh my God, like that's not, that's not a contract. That's like ridiculous.

It is ridiculous.

The only things that should be in any kind of agreement is to be respectful, to be sober and to follow the general rules of the house. That's it. I don't know why it is. I tell parents this all the time. You don't have to tell your kid what you're going to do if and when blank occurs.

Cuz you don't really know.

You don't know. Even if you do know, you don't have to tell them. I don't have to say, you know, Margaret, if you don't call me on Thursday night, I'm not gonna talk to you on Friday. I Just simply don't talk to her on Friday if she doesn't call me on Thursday night. If that was my contract rule, this happens.

This big, giant, nasty thing is gonna be the consequence. And they'll definitely never do it because they won't want that big consequence.

No, but I, you know, we know why parents do this. First of all, they're terrified. Second of all, they don't know what to do.

And the treatment center probably told them to do it.

And. Oh, totally, the treatment center. But the treatment center is doing it so that they can in good conscious say, we provided the parents with a plan, but they're only doing it for that reason.

It's cya, because it's like in their records. They let this person leave with this airtight plan, which looks really good on paper. Treatment center's happy parents in the moment are happy.

Kid agrees to it because they just want to go.

They don't know anything, right?

So everybody's like, oh, this is solid. And it unravels in the airport. Don't bring them back.

Don't take a kid out of a treatment center and bring them back home.

That's so true.

But if you're going to.

Unless the kid hadn't lived with you, like, we have these people now who they bringing the kid home, but he's been living in Georgia, right?

Okay.

So that's, that's okay. But if, if the kid had left your house to go to treatment, don't bring it back to your house, right? They're just gonna unravel.

But sometimes, if your kid is young, you have to bring them back home. You really don't have any choice.

Right?

So if you get in that situation, don't make any promises.

Don't. Don't make any big talk.

Right?

And that's what I think. Contrast.

No if then statements, right?

Our, our expectations are that you'll be, you'll remain sober, you'll be respectful, you'll follow the rules of the house. We'll see about school, we'll see about phones, we'll see about driving after we sort of figure out what's happening. Just leave it vague. And anyone who's backed into a corner will agree to anything, right? But the minute they get two inches out of the corner, that's ridiculous. And they're not going to do any of those things. So that's. What happens when you're leaving, is you're in a corner. If you want to go home, you will agree to this plan.

And you've been in treatment, so you've been trained on what you're supposed to.

Say right here, Right?

So those are our general philosophies, but parents still want to know the specifics about what to do about the car and the phone and the money and how to keep them away from those bad influence friends, those friends, those bad kids.

So my general thing is if nothing should change when they come out of treatment, except where they're putting their head down to sleep at night, so they didn't have a phone and they didn't have money and they didn't have a car while they had treatment initially, when they come home, they should not have any of those things either, as they.

Too much change at once.

It's too much change at once, and it's too many rules to have to set down and enforce. And makes the parents the police, which drives the parents crazy. They get all codependent again, and the kid says, oh, my God, and goes back out. So let's just set it so we don't have to have that. I think one of the problems, too, Amber, is that people don't. I hear this a lot. People will literally say, what do I talk to my kid about? So the contract gives them things to talk about, not the right things. So I think that's another thing I like people to figure out is before you get your kid or before you go visit your kid, you just talk to them like they're people.

The last thing you want to do is be bringing a kid home from treatment and be immediately back into the same old power struggle, probation officer, parolee kind of situation they were in before they left. Because you're just immediately.

You're just reinforcing the old negative emotions, being back on. Right?

You're setting the stage for that for you and them.

Because the kid is thinking, oh, my God, I've been gone 34, 45, whatever, days, and I've done all this change, and you haven't done Jack Doodley, so why should I hold my change? Right?

What's our.

What are.

What's the general thing that you tell parents about the car? How are they going to know when to give the car back?

When I tell them.

What if they're in Alaska and they don't see Campbell?

I tell them, when you see I'm big on humility and willingness. As long as we're seeing those things, I say we are still in early recovery. So if they're humble enough to suck it up and not have the car for a little bit, if they're being respectful at home, if you're not seeing any behaviors that indicate that the drugs may be back in, slowly reintroduce the car. But I would say, oh, maybe a week after they get home, I would look for that and slowly introduce it. Let them go to the grocery store to run an errand. Let them take it to go see their therapist. Let them go pick up a sibling from school.

Should they have a tracker on that?

No, they should not have a tracker.

That's a good way to control it.

Because you know where most trackers end up?

Where?

Disabled or apparently there's a very special plant at every single mall in America you can hide your phones and your trackers in. And parents think you're at the mall and you're not at the mall at all. It just makes them mad because sooner or later you know that the kid is lying and then what are you going to do about it?

It's keeping you compulsively checking.

Yes. Yeah.

And that keeps you in the anxiety based upon fear.

And it's just teaching your kid to cheat and lie and steal and manipulate again.

Outsmart you.

Outsmart you. Yeah.

So what about the phone?

I'm a fan of sort of scaling not having a phone for a little. Maybe again a week, then a flip phone, different phone number.

I know you're the bad guy. We've had so many kids that had to get a flip phone. It's so embarrassing. You're cool.

That's why I sell the T shirts that say ho for families bringing single handedly bringing the flip phone back. I sell them to the kids and they like them. A big believer. Change your phone number probably twice. Anyone's gonna try to find it once and we'll probably get it from someone. But anyone that really wants it for bad reasons won't bother to get it twice.

So change the number. Get. Why get a flip phone?

Because they can't have all the social media on it. And social media is how they get hooked back up with their dealers or the kids they were selling to.

No Snapchat.

No Snapchat, no Insta Drive, Twitter. Call the dealer. Yeah, I don't. I'm not a big fan of that.

Plus we saw this recently too. Like they come back and because their identity's wrapped up and being this cool drug kid, even if they aren't using, they start snapping pictures of themselves portraying themselves in their same way because that's the way they've got their social needs met in the past.

I agree.

We saw that just recently.

Yeah, it happens all the time. And then other kids see it and they don't get. They don't understand addiction. So they, it's just one. Come on, man, it doesn't matter.

Let's have a welcome home party, right? What about money?

I don't know. I'm not all that rigid on the money. Like if like parents are like. And then he wanted $10 to go to Burger King. I'm like, okay, first of all, he's not going to like fall apart over $10. So I think small amounts of money to go Burger King, Starbucks, wherever you want to go is fine. You can have them bring a receipt. I don't have a problem with that. I don't think that's too crazy. Large amount of money, no, but I also don't like giving families give them their debit card back, but then monitor their bank account. Same thing as tracking the car. It's information you have after the fact and what are you gonna do with it? And the kid's just gonna lie.

It basically triggers the parents obsessiveness and it won't let you unlock yourself from that.

Right. And it just puts them back in that codependent thinking of, I have to control, protect and manage my child. Which drives my anxiety up, which makes me in that job, which makes the kid just be able to think, oh, my God.

I usually like to say, you can't control this problem externally. You can't control it by controlling friends, money, car, anything. Recovery is an internal issue, not an external issue.

I remember when you told me you can, you and Frank can sleep in front of every door in the house. You can put bars on the windows. You can build a moat around your house. You can put the Berlin Wall on the outside of the moat lined with guard dogs. If he's gonna use, he's gonna use.

I said that.

You said that. I use it all the time. I stole it.

Kids will have drugs being delivered to the mailbox.

They the mailbox under bushes, they're thrown in the window, down chimneys, they're coming in. You cannot stop it.

That you can get drugs delivered for sure pretty easily.

Right? But all these things we're talking about also, if you will spend time talking to your kid normally picking out a fun show on Netflix, going toward the connective thing, then the kid may have a chance rather than you policing them.

And not only does that set you up for better chances that they'll be on the right path, but if they get on the wrong path, they'll feel guilty about it because you've been so nice and kind and trusting rather than being a screaming, raving, lunatic freak out person that they can't stand anyway.

Right. So why people have contracts though is because this sounds easy and it's not. Because you're so afraid and mad and you spent money and you're exhausted. So you go back into those roles. Which is why people come here, why people need a family counselor. So we can hold that validated. It's totally right. But these babies are going to just feed it. So I get why people. Totally get why people do all this.

So basically you're saying no home contract. You can sort of generally state your expectations just to be clean.

Like I can remember saying, to live in this house, we expect you to be sober in school and going to Iop.

I usually. Not that you can really enforce this, but if I were gonna focus in on behavior, I would say like their attitude in the house.

Yeah. Respectful of the home in general and sober. That's it. It's so basic.

And they have to figure out how they're gonna stay sober.

They have to figure it out. Right. And if it's no meetings, then it's no meetings. If it's two meetings a day, it's.

Two meetings a day. You mean you don't make them go to 90 meetings in 90 days?

No, I don't believe in 1990. Sorry, what? I'm sorry, Bill and Bill.

Oh my God. You're hit by that.

I don't believe in it.

Why not?

Because it's boxes. Check. And you can go to a meeting. Think about clouds the entire meeting. But you can say, yeah, I went to the meeting. You get absolutely nothing out of meeting. But you've checked the box.

So it's not really. You don't believe in nine means nine days. You just don't believe in required.

Right, True.

So you like for them to go to meetings. But if you say you have to.

Do it, it just becomes something that they'll do because you. They can say, I went to the meeting. Back up.

And now they can hold you to the contract.

I need my phone. I went to a meeting. Yeah. I'm not against meetings. No.

Just want to make that clear.

Yeah. Love a meeting.

For the 12 step gods. Trick you down.

Totally love a meeting.

Okay.

Especially an open meeting.

Any other pet peeves we have about people coming out of treatment or not even just people coming out of treatment, but before they get to us.

Well, I like them to get to us on some level so that they really understand addiction and the neurobiology behind the addiction so they can have some empathy for the situation. Parents come in and they're mad. They don't understand it, or they come in really defensive that my kid's a good kid, but they just think he's hanging out with the wrong people. If they can understand the neurobiology of it, they have some literally scientific information to help them see why some of the navigation points we've just gone over help. If you come in and you're mad, it takes a long time to get mad. Parents not mad and meanwhile they're propagating the problem.

So I know some of the things that you just heard Campbell say aren't maybe the most popular point of view. So let us know what you think. Tell us in the comments below. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Do you have any experience with this? We'd love to know your thoughts on the situation too, For tons more information on all things addiction and recovery and lots of free expert advice. Make sure and subscribe and hit the bell so you don't miss a thing.